This column celebrates the vibrant literary culture and heritage of Dumaguete City, in anticipation of its bid to be designated as UNESCO City of Literature under the Creative Cities Network. It is produced by the Buglas Writers Guild, a network of literary artists from Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental, and Siquijor. Each week, we will focus on the work of one local writer. For this month, the guest editor is Dumaguete fictionist Ian Rosales Casocot.
The first two weeks of April is an important time to commemorate the educator, lawyer, diplomat, and writer Vicente Emilio Guzman Sinco, founder of Foundation University. He was born, after all on 5 April 1894 in Bais, Negros Oriental, and died on 8 April 1987 in Manila.
In those 93 years, he became adviser and confidant of five Philippine presidents, and molded a reputation as a great educator, which led him to establish Foundation College on 4 July 1949. He would also become dean of the College of Law of the University of the Philippines in 1953, and on 18 February 1958, the Board of Regents of the UP elected him to the Presidency of the University, the eighth in that roster, and he served in that capacity until 1962—becoming, in retrospect, one of UP’s finest presidents.
He served in a pivotal time. According to the University of the Philippines website, in an article consolidating its history: “The 1950s and 1960s saw the transformation of UP from the brainchild of American hopes and dreams for the Philippines into a bastion of intense nationalism, [and] Vicente Sinco preserved the University’s integrity from communist paranoia and partisan politics…”
On 28 January 1969, Foundation College, the Dumaguete school he founded, was granted a university charter.
Dr. Sinco graduated with a BA degree from what was then Silliman Institute in 1917, and pursued his law studies [including his master’s degree] from the University of the Philippines. He became the first dean of the Arellano University School of Law, serving from 1938 to 1940.
After World War II, he served as Commissioner of the Office of Foreign Relations from 1945 to 1946, and launched the country’s involvement in world affairs as the representative of the Philippines, signing the United Nations Charter in 1945. He was also a delegate to the Constitutional Convention representing the first district of Negros Oriental in 1971.
Such was a storied life he led that his biography, Vicente Sinco: In Memoriam, was written by no less than the writer and National Artist for Theatre Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio, published in 2001.
He established Foundation University as a fulfillment of what he thought Philippine education should be like—which should, above all, be a uniquely Filipino university: Filipino in philosophy, Filipino in objectives, Filipino in orientation, and Filipino in culture, with its curricular offerings explicitly geared to national development, and its cultural programs clearly directed to the promotion, development, and enrichment of the cultural heritage of the Filipino nation.
Dr. Sinco’s books are mostly about the law and government, and his thoughts on Philippine education are elucidated deeply in his most notable book, Education in Philippine Society, which was published by the University of the Philippines Publication Office in 1959.
A review of the book by James J. Meany published in the April 1960 issue of Philippine Studies tells us that Sinco, in the book, was “against the overemphasis on vocational or technical training in the schools and colleges, against proliferation of courses and the weakening of the liberal arts program, and in general against the neglect of the primary objective of formal schooling which is the development of the intellect of the student.” Sinco, Meany noted, also “rejects the theories of ‘progressive education’ and the ‘life-adjustment’ school and urges a return to sanity.”
Meany also noted that the book is a collection of the Sinco’s speeches since his inauguration as president of the UP—thus “a fair portion of the book is naturally devoted to a delineation of that university’s important role in the life of the nation.” He continues: “One of the best written speeches in the collection … treats of the importance of regional universities. President Sinco concedes to private universities in the provinces an important role in the formation of the nation’s leadership, likening them to England’s ‘Red Brick’ universities as compared with the very few ancient institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge. He discreetly urges these provincial universities to maintain the highest scholastic standards, not lowering them because of their geographical remoteness from the metropolitan centers. Let them avoid deceit and dishonesty, let them strive not merely to attain student success in bar and board examinations and in civil service ‘quizzes’ but primarily to form cultivated minds and inculcate high moral standards.
“It is encouraging to read President Sinco’s protest against the laws and regulations of the Government of the Philippines prescribing details of curricula and the subjects which should be included in the schedule of courses. He appeals for freedom from outside control not only for the University of the Philippines—which has suffered comparatively little from government interference—but also for all institutions of learning, especially those devoted to higher education. ‘Standardization is desirable in factories and machines. It is detest-able in institutions of higher learning.’ Before he became president of the state university, Dr. Sinco was noted for his firm and well-reasoned defense of the liberty of the private schools from government control. It is good to know that he has not changed his opinion… President Sinco advocates a well-administered academic program as the best means for character education. He discounts the value of so-called ‘character’ courses or the effectiveness of stories about ‘saints and heroes,’ and insists instead on the value of daily repetition by the student of responsible acts in doing his school chores, his class lessons and his extra-curricular assignments. ‘In the last analy-sis,’ the author writes, ‘the improvement of educational standards and the test of sound educational performance inevitably involve the development of discipline and character.’”
Lastly, Meany noted: “Especially noteworthy are [the book’s] exposition of the nature and importance of liberal education, its discussion of the relationship of schooling to experience, its plea for an increase not in the number of years of schooling but in the number and intensity of class-weeks and class-hours, its insistence on the need for combining both research and teaching. It is most heartening to find such solid educational doctrine in the influential president of the state university.”
